Written by Maria Ciotec, Web Developer at This is Milk Ltd ​

By Angela Prentner-Smith, Founder and MD of This is Milk 

An interview with Jason McSweeney

At This is Milk we're all about upskilling and reskilling and our recent intern, Jason, was the perfect fit. Whilst running his own Thai boxing gym,  Jason started studying UX and design in his spare time.  He soon became passionate about UX - so much so that he recently shut his gym to retrain as a UX designer. We asked him about his journey up to this point, how the pandemic has affected his career, and the benefits of starting afresh at 40.

Tell us about your journey up to this point.  

I moved from Ireland to Scotland 15 years ago to work as an admin manager for JD Gyms. This was followed by stints in Glasgow and London as a Sales Rep for Coca Cola and Vitamin Water. While I was doing this, I also started working as a personal trainer and running a Thai boxing gym. Redundancy gave me the opportunity to focus on the gym full time, which I ended up running for 10 years.     

How did you end up in the world of UX design?   

While I was running my gym, I started to take an interest in graphic design. I was hiring people to do promotions, social media and advertising. I’ve always had a creative side and realised that it would be much quicker if I learned those skills myself!  

So, I signed up for some online graphic design courses and learned the Adobe Suite programmes. Before I knew it I was looking at Experience Design and it just progressed from there!  

My perception completely changed. In the past, if I’d come across a badly designed website, I would’ve just left it. I started to understand why a website was bad. I started to see that no user research or usability testing had been done. It all started to make sense. I could see that so many websites were designed for the company and not for the user. I was hooked!   

Did the pandemic affect your career change?  

With my gym closed due to Covid, I could completely focus on learning about design. I was getting up at six in the morning and working until late - I was totally in the zone. I thought I could do this all day long. That was it. I’d found what I wanted to do.   

 I signed up for a six-month UX diploma course with the USDA Institute based in Dublin, which I'd discovered via the UX Scotland Facebook Group. I started messaging people – one of which was Angela, and that's how I ended up as an intern at This is Milk!   

Covid has caused a lot of damage for a lot of people – job-wise and family-wise, but in some ways, it's been good to me. If the pandemic had never happened then I’d never have had the chance to go down this path. It’s my Covid Career!  

What are the advantages and disadvantages of changing career at 40?   

I think there are more advantages than disadvantages to starting afresh at 40. Obviously, I'm a lot more mature, I've had experience running a business for 10 years which is no easy feat. I've dealt with hundreds of people from all walks of life.   

I think life experience is so much more valuable than just a qualification that you didn't really know why you were getting in the first place! So many 18-year-olds don’t really know who they are or what they like. I certainly didn’t. I just did what I was told I should do.   

Things are changing all the time, jobs are changing all the time, so you have to be constantly adapting and changing too.   

What have you learned at This is Milk?  

I’ve been shadowing Morgane Tanguy, and have been involved in everything from user research to usability testing to feeding back to the dev team for the new learning platform, Neve. It's been a really exciting time, and I just soaked up as much as I could whilst I was here! 
​
What’s next?   

It’s been brilliant getting practical experience at This is Milk. I think learning and applying what I know to real situations is so important. I didn’t want to get a theoretical qualification without getting work experience at the same time.   
​
Last month I shut my gym for good. I believe that if you want to do something you need to be all in. I’m fully committed to becoming a UX designer. I'll be looking for a UX role as soon as my course is over and in that sense, I think my internship at This is Milk will be invaluable. I can’t wait to get started.   

Thank you and good luck Jason! If you'd like to contact Jason, click on his name to go to his Linkedin page. 

You've all heard of the carbon footprint, but what about the digital carbon footprint? The digital carbon footprint is all the emissions generated by online activity via digital technologies.  
 
It may not be something you've considered much before, but there are small things you can do that will have a big impact on reducing our collective digital carbon footprint.  

Let’s talk about it: the internet pollutes the environment.   
 
The internet uses a lot of energy. Any digital activity, such as searching and browsing the internet, sending an email or uploading images generates CO2 emissions. The cloud also has a big part to play in this. The data we store in the cloud is materialised in data centres and vast servers. These centres and servers need huge amounts of energy to run and to support the internet.  
 
Small steps you can take:    
 
Instead of cloud storage, use local storage such as USB sticks and hard drives whenever you can. We understand that this is not always an option at work for security and sharing reasons, but think if it could be a solution for other things, for example, photos and videos.  
 

• Search the web with Ecosia. Ecosia uses search ads that generate income for Ecosia that then uses this income to plant trees.    ​
• Delete your emails! And unsubscribe from email newsletters that no longer interest you   

   
Design can be greener...via accessibility!   

Design for accessibility is sustainable and eco-friendly because clean, easy to use designs reduce the data transfer. This reduces energy use , which in turn reduces gas emissions.    
 
Small steps you can take:    

• Consider your colour palette: a high contrast ratio in the colour will translate well online.   
• Limit your font usage: try not to use more than 1 or 2 fonts, because the more you use, the heavier your page size becomes (particularly if you use customised fonts). Using fonts that are readable by everyone, on every device, reduces data transfer.   

 
Think of sustainable content.   
​
The heavier the content on your website, the heavier the data transfer and the more energy used. Every video, image, icon and piece of copy has an impact on your page weight and, eventually, the planet.   
 
So try to approach content in a sustainable way with these small steps:    

• Videos are heavy. Think about whether the audience will get value from a video, or whether concise text and an image will work just as well.  
• Reduce the weight of the images you upload online.    
• Write clear, short and concise text copy to convey information. This has the added benefit of getting information over faster to your audience.    

   
If you've read up to this point, you'll understand how every tiny interaction or action on the web has an impact on the environment. This is a really important thing to be mindful of (and share) as we add more and more devices to our day to day lives.  

​In this blog, i've shared the small steps that are most important to me, but there are so many other small things you can do to make a change. If you’re interested in this topic, I’d recommend checking out this article: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/internet-carbon-footprint.   
   
Thank you for reading :)   
 
Morgane  
UX Designer at This is Milk 

If you have any thoughts, i'd love to hear from you. You can contact me on Linkedin or at morgane.tanguy@thisismilk.co.uk. I also host a podcast called Fairtales about discrimination in the work place - follow me on instagram @fairtales.podcast 
 

An interview with Angela Prentner-Smith 

Dyspraxia is a condition that affects around 10% of the British population, yet it’s still generally misunderstood. To mark Dyspraxia Week, we asked our founder and MD Angela Prentner-Smith a few questions about Dyspraxia, her diagnosis, and how it affects her life and work.   

When did you first notice you had Dyspraxic traits?  

As a child, I was labelled as clumsy. I was the kid that cried in gym class because I found it so hard. My nan used to say I was covered in bruises. Dyspraxia affects your gross motor skills, and your fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are things like running or playing ball. Fine motor skills are things like handwriting. So along with my general clumsiness, I also found handwriting incredibly difficult. Although I could read before I started school, my handwriting was about two years behind everybody else's. My handwriting is still not good. However, during my school years, nothing was picked up. I don’t think Dyspraxia was even a consideration when I was at school. Even now, how many parents would recognise Dyspraxia in their children? Raising awareness about the condition is a priority.   

 Does Dyspraxia just affect your coordination?   

Dyspraxia is also known as ‘Developmental Coordination Disorder’, but I don’t think that term covers all aspects of Dyspraxia. Working memory is also one of the things that affect people with Dyspraxia, and I think that has even more of an impact in the workplace and at school than the coordination issues. The ability to retain sequences of movements and sequences of words is also harder for people with Dyspraxia.  

Another thing - and I've only just learned this - is that people with Dyspraxia are emotionally sensitive. This makes complete sense to me now. When I was at school I was very sensitive and I used to get very upset about things. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. It doesn't help when you're also struggling to focus and to do some of the things that your peers find easy like running, P.E and playing games like hopscotch. On the plus side, that sensitivity as a child turns into empathy as an adult, so it's not necessarily a bad thing.  

 How has it affected your working life? 

Distinguishing from left and right and understanding the physical arrangement of things is a big challenge for me. This has been particularly difficult and stressful in the workplace. New space setups, big conferences, and big away days are hard because my brain is working extra hard to understand where things are in space. I have to put so much effort into not bumping into people! And just the level of sensory overload that comes with being in a space with a lot of people can be really exhausting. It takes me weeks to get the layout of a new office building as I can’t remember which way is which. Not knowing where I am can be quite panic-inducing.  

​One of the hardest things that I remember in my working life was an away day. It was meant to be fun, but for me, it was incredibly stressful. I was in a strange environment with 200/300 strangers, so I already had social anxiety.  Then the activities involved listening, which if you have working memory issues is exhausting and difficult. To top it off we were put into groups and assessed on our drumming and dancing skills!  I was literally the weakest link. I felt like this little girl that wanted to crumble again. But what can you do? Who wants to say that to their employer that they're not going to take part because they find drumming and dancing and being with groups of people really stressful?   
  
Is there anything employers can do to make it easier?   
 
It’s a tricky one, and I don’t have all the answers, because part of me thinks, well why should others miss out on what they want to do because of me? However, a bit of compassion and an understanding that the things that they think are easy and shouldn’t be a problem can be for others. Asking questions is also really important, don’t just assume that everything will be alright for everyone.   
  
We’re lucky at This is Milk that we have a culture of bringing our whole selves to work. Around half of our team has been diagnosed as neurodivergent, which is quite high for the size of us. And I'm quite proud that we have people in their 40s talking for the first time about the struggles that they've had in their lives and how their brains work differently.   
  
Dyspraxia also makes workplace learning harder. For example, being in a group of people, showing up to a workshop, having to sit and take in the information in certain ways, handwriting and taking notes is difficult. Then there are the working memory issues that come with Dyspraxia and other conditions like Dyslexia. Learning should be for everyone, and we need to focus on removing those barriers. At This is Milk we feel so strongly about this that last year we started developing an inclusive platform called Neve. Neve adapts learning pathways to the uniqueness of your brain. For example, one of the many things it could do for someone with working memory issues is delivering information in bite-sized chunks, so that that the information is easier to retain.   
  
Tell us about your diagnosis  

 When I was in my late 20s, a colleague told me that she had Dyspraxia. Out of interest, I looked it up on Wikipedia and I went through it thinking: “Oh my god, everything on that is me, everything that is all me”. Fortunately, at the time, I was doing a master's degree in design innovation at the Glasgow School of Art and their additional support needs unit arranged for me to see an educational psychologist.  
  
Part of the diagnostic assessment was the Wechsler Intelligence Scale and what they’re looking for is a  spiky profile - when you’re really high for one thing and really low for another. Someone who’s not neurodivergent would have a more or less bumpy wave, however, those who have conditions such as Dyspraxia or Dyslexia tend to have really big spikes. For example, my verbal comprehension was up in the high percentile – which means if you have 100 people all my age, my verbal comprehension was in the top 10%. However, my processing speed was in the first centile at the bottom of it.  
  
How important was that diagnosis for you?  

 There is a view that a diagnosis doesn't matter. That labels don't matter, but I think they do because they help you understand yourself. They allow you to feel okay about being in the world as you, rather than thinking you're just bad at stuff.  These aren't curable conditions, and who even want to ‘cure’ them? It’s part of who we are. I think that's an important way to look at it.   
  
Do you think Dyspraxia makes you stronger in some areas?   
​
Strategic insights, empathy, episodic memory, tenacity, and being a really hard worker are all Dyspraxic traits.  I frequently get told I have a brain like a trap. I remember what document we've put things in, and exactly when we did something. I can pretty much remember the content of a whole meeting.  There are no flies on me for that!  Yet, on the other hand, my working memory can't remember whether my left or my right tap is hot or cold  
  
I wish I had known there were particular strengths of Dyspraxia when I was diagnosed because I probably would have felt better about it. The language used around Dyspraxia, and other neurodivergent conditions can be so negative. They really focus on the problems.  Why can't we just change the language on this? It’s time we started talking about the strengths instead.   
  
You can find out more about Dyspraxia at The Dyspraxia Organisation and if you’d like to be kept up to date with our new learning platform, Neve, please enter your details in this form, and we'll be in touch. 

In today's 3@3, our Inclusion and Engagement consultant Lynn Pilkington talks to UX Designer Morgane Tanguy about all things digital accessibility. 

​In the video interview, Lynn asks Morgane: Why is digital accessibility important? Who benefits from digital accessibility? And how do we make things more digital accessible?

If you're interested in learning more about digital accessibility, Lynn and Morgane will be facilitating our 1-day course (split over 2 mornings) on the 2nd and 3rd of November. You can find more about that here or send us an email if you'd like to find out more. 

If you're looking for the web accessibility standards Morgane mentions in the video, you can find them here. 

We hope you enjoy our latest 3@3, and if you'd like to connect with Lynn and Morgane, click on their names to go to their Linkedin profiles. 

By Tremis Skeete 

​Building products than resonate with many customers are not built in a vacuum. We want to build products customers love, and that sometimes requires connecting with what real people care about and understanding from their perspective what problems are worth solving.  

​How do we connect with these customers in order to understand them? This is where identifying customer types can be useful in focusing research activities. Here is one way you can identify three customer types. 

There are essentially three types of customers that use your software product: 

1. The cold customers: They historically have not expressed a deep interest in using the product, and if they do, they rarely use it. 
 
2. The casual customers: They use it more than cold customers, but they are not “in love with the product” so it is not a habit or part of their lifestyle for them to use it. 
 
3. The core customers: The customers who found a way to connect with the product. They personally discovered how it could improve their lives, they love your product, and they do not want to visualise their lives without it. 

It's only natural to focus on your core customers, because they have valuable experiences and stories that led them to being loyal to your product. That’s why capturing those stories can be valuable for developing other services and launching marketing initiatives. Core customers are the ones really using your product and can provide invaluable insights. 

Regarding the cold and casual users, one can work to examine their respective user journeys and the thoughts and feelings they associate with it. To accomplish this, strive to do the following: 

1. Understand the actions they take in your product 
2. Understand what they think and feel as they take those actions, and 
3. Don’t forget to ask why. 
 
As a digital designer, remember that your customer's perception of the product matters more than yours - so as you dive deeper into customer data, don’t forget to explore how the perceptions they share can evolve your design process. In time and with enough practice, being mindful of these three types of customers can help you gain valuable knowledge to improve conversion and retention rates, and increase your digital product lifespan. 

Tremis Skeete is a Product Manager at This is Milk. Click on his name to go to his Linkedin profile or email him to chat more about product management. 

This week, User  Researcher and Designer, Bobby King talks to Tremis Skeete about sketch noting. Tremis asks him:

• What is sketch noting and why does he use it?
• How does sketch noting help clients?

• And how can we learn a bit more about doing it ourselves? 
  
  

We hope you enjoy it, and if you'd like to connect with Bobby King, click on his name to go to his Linkedin profile, or find him at Scottish Design Agency - Haver.

If you have any suggestions for future Three at Threes, or would like to take part in one, we'd love to hear from you -email us. 

By Tremis Skeete 

Welcome our latest Three at Three. In this week's episode, Angela Prentner-Smith chats to Tesco Bank's Process Improvement and Development Lead Ann Marie Dockerill, about Process Modelling.  Angela asks Ann Marie the following three questions:
​
Why is good process design imperative for business?
What do you think the key steps to good process design are?
​Can iterative process mapping be applied in an agile environment?
 
We hope you enjoy it, and if you'd like to find out more about Ann Marie, click on her name to go to her Linkedin profile.
 
If you'd like to request a topic for future Three at Three, or get involved in one, we'd love to hear from you. Please email your suggestions to:  hello@thisismilk.co.uk

Welcome to our Pride Month special of Three at Three. In this episode, our Engagement and Inclusion expert Lynn Pilkington interviews Mental Health First Aid Trainer and consultant, Davey Shields.

Davey is an independent Mental Health First Aid Trainer and consultant. He is also the founder of the charity MenTalkHealth which was set up to tell stories around mental health to encourage men and others to talk more. 

This week, our Product Manager Tremis Skeete is back, this time talking to Labster's Martin Keane about Martin's career journey into product management and learning from his perspective, what it takes to be successful in a product career.

Tremis asks Martin the following three questions: 
 
1. You have a background in marketing with specialities in international research and social media. As you progressed in your career, how would you say that your past roles prepared you for the product management role you have now?
 
2. You have been in roles with the titles 'project manager', 'product and project manager', and now, a 'product owner'. Could you share with our audience the distinctions between those kinds of roles, if any?
 
3. If you could list the top five skills that you feel make you successful as a product manager, what would you share? 

We hope you enjoy it! 
​

​In today’s Three at Three, our product designer Tremis Skeete and our UX designer Morgane Tanguy, discuss UX and User Journeys. Morgane gives Tremis her take on the following questions:
​
1. When you want to understand how a user will use a product what's the first thing you do?
2. When you decide to focus your efforts on understanding user journeys, what problem/s are you trying to solve?
​3.Why is it so important to understand the scenarios for when a user interacts with a product?

When talking about the future, people usually engage in activities of hypothetical observation, negotiation and informed speculation. But how does one perform these activities towards gathering this information? Where does one begin to look at data within the complex realities we live in? Identifying future signals is one of those methods researchers use to recognise patterns in the landscape of our modern world. ​

In the run up to our Designing for Future Signals course next week,  Angela-Prentner Smith and our new Product Manager, Tremis Skeete, discuss the art of Future Signals: what are they? What do you do with them? And how do you recognise them? Here's an overview of what they talked about.
​

Last year only 2% of parents took shared parental leave. This year MD and founder of This is Milk, Angela Prentner-Smith, and her partner David Prentner-Smith challenged the norm by taking sharing parental leave with their second child, Neve. Here they tell us why they decided to do it, their experience of it, and why they think it’s so important to challenge the expectation that women should always  stay at home with the baby.  ​

In this week's edition of our weekly 3@3  series,  Al and Steve discuss the Agile method and DT best practice with Agile coach Paul Mathers. Paul was a business architect for 10 years before becoming an Agile coach with Arabica Transformation consultants. 

The 3 questions covered in this episode:

• Arm's length leadership - why is this bad for transformation?
  
• Theory over practice - do the certificates really help?
  
• Scaling - when is it right to do this?

In this weeks 3@3 conversation, we speak with John Hatfield from Second City Communications.

John joins us in week number 15 of the series, to give us his take on the following hot topic questions:

• Communication is just one of many facets of a digital transformation journey. How important is it?
• What are the common pitfalls and barriers to effective communication in change management?
• What can organisations do to get it right and what are the tangible benefits of doing so?

In this weeks 3@3, we are joined by CIO Keith Laidlaw.

IT is part of the team and is an essential part of the strategic leadership team along with operations, change management and HR.  Keith suggested that years ago IT was considered a citadel department, too busy with other IT related projects to spearhead any organisational change programmes. Over time organisations developed 'IT islands', external to the IT department, which they invariably knew nothing about, which was fine to an extent, however, IT islands affected the holistic nature of the organisations IT systems. Suddenly marketing systems couldn't talk to sales, sales systems couldn't talk to finance,  the island effect had created technology 'silos'. Had IT been involved in these change decisions, they would have had a more holistic view of the technology. ​

Has working from home killed the command & control manager or indeed the validity of this style of organisational culture? This is 'the big pointy question' Angela and Steve discuss in this edition of our 3@3 video blog.

Angela suggests that while managerial approaches need to change, we're not quite there yet. We are still seeing some organisations encouraging their middle management to push employees down the 9-5 route with little appreciation of those working with children in the house or partners that work shifts. Some organisations consider getting their employees to work their usual 9-5 working patterns as a return 'to normal', and are not yet in the place of looking at deliverable and accountability rather than the proverbial 'bums on seats' approach. These are the organisations that will struggle as this 'new way of working culture', embeds in society. However, Angela suggests that it's never too late to build relationships with your team based on trust, deliverable's and shared organisational goals. 

In this week's 3@3 Al and Steve discuss the role of skills development in the successful delivery of transformational projects. 

Al talks about his own eclectic learning journey that incorporated further, higher, mature, online learning and everything in between. Having experienced the full spectrum of learning pedagogy's, Al suggests that the most important aspect of up-skilling is to find a learning approach that works for your circumstances and your preferred style of learning.

Within digital evolution projects, do the IT team lead or support? This issue (not surprisingly) comes up a lot. However, given the core driver for all these conversations are around people, their employees, clients, stakeholders etc, the process is ultimately a people-first approach rather than technology first. IT (of course) has its place at the table as evolution programmes are discussed and planned, due to their inherent knowledge about the business and current systems therein. IT departments understand how these systems currently work and how they can be developed and used to greater effect. Digital evolution projects run parallel with BAU activities and the BAU environment is a core part of that evolution discussion, as it is ultimately about improving on what you currently do.